“See you in the morning,” Xochi said. “I mean, later today.”
“Right,” Dean said. “See you.”
The suite was decent but utterly forgettable. All that Dean cared about was that it was relatively clean and the bathroom door had a lock.
Sam was setting up his gear on the tiny desk. Dean could hear the shower start up next door. He wondered if it was Xochi.
“You need to get in there?” Dean asked, gesturing at the bathroom door.
Sam shook his head. “I’m good,”
“Because I’m gonna be a while,” Dean said.
“Have at it, dude.” Sam said without looking up from his laptop. “Do us all a favor.”
Dean went into the bathroom and locked the door.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Three hours later, Dean felt infinitely more civilized. Rested, as well as ever, and otherwise stabilized. Showered and shaved and caffeinated. Clean socks and underwear. Ready to get out there and save the damn world. Again.
Xochi’s friend ran a tiny jewelry store just off the main plaza. Touristy stuff mostly. Lots of turquoise and silver mixed in with gothic crosses, bats and skulls. It was a mother-daughter operation. The daughter running the public half of the shop while mom did business out of the back.
Mom met them at the back door. She was probably close to fifty and dressed like the aftermath of an explosion in the Stevie Nicks factory. Lots of flowing, gauzy lace and frills that hardly seemed like practical work wear for a serious bullet-smith.
“This is Consuelo Morena Valesquez,” Xochi said. “Sam and Dean Winchester and Claudia Porcayo.”
“You can call me Chelo,” the older woman replied with a wink. Her English was flawless. “All the hunters do. Especially the handsome ones.” She took Sam’s arm on one side and Dean’s on the other. “Come on in.”
The back room of the little shop was a scattered mess of bullet molds in varying sizes, ladles, and bricks of pure silver. In the center of the unfinished cement floor was a large cast-iron pot over what looked like the guts of an electric turkey cooker. There was a heavy leather apron on a hook by the door, as well as several pairs of thick, elbow-length gloves and plastic safety goggles. The far wall was covered with Polaroid photos. Chelo posed and smiling beside a hundred different men and women, all heavily armed. All hunters, obviously. It was amazing to Dean how easy it was to recognize other hunters, even in another country. It wasn’t just the guns. It was the eyes. The same eyes he saw every day in the bathroom mirror.
“Xochi tells me you have a problem with the Nagual,” Chelo said. “I have a shorty I might be able to spare. What do you have to trade?”
Xochi and Dean emptied their pockets of all the weapons they’d stolen from the phony federales back in Nogales. Chelo picked up the weighty Magnum.
“.50 caliber?” She whistled appreciatively. “I’d love to take this one, but it sounds like you need it more than I do. Lucky for you, I just poured a fresh rack of 50s last night.”
She turned to a large cabinet and unlocked it with a key that hung from a chain around her neck. After a moment of searching through inner drawers, she turned and handed Dean a sawed-off Mossberg 500.
“You know what,” she said. “Just take it. But in return I want a photo with you two handsome boys.”
“You got it,” Sam said.
She handed an old-school Polaroid camera to Xochi. Sam and Dean both had to slouch down to keep their heads in frame with the petite bullet-smith. Xochi took the shot and handed the developing photo to Chelo.
“Thanks,” Chelo said, waving the photo in the air.
Once the image came in, she smiled and pinned the snapshot up on the wall beside an old photo of Xochi that Dean hadn’t noticed until just then. In the picture Xochi looked about Claudia’s age. No tattoos. Her hair was shorter, chopped into blunt bangs. She was trying for a stony bad ass stare that wasn’t quite there yet. Kind of reminded Dean of himself at that age.
“Okay,” Chelo said. “So you need 50s, 45s, and 38s, plus the 12-gauge slugs for the Mossberg. Anything else?”
“Got any silver knives?” Dean asked.
“Of course,” she said, like he’d just asked if the Pope was Catholic. “How many you need?”
“Three,” Dean said.
“Four,” Claudia said.
“No,” Dean said.
“It’s okay,” Xochi said. “She has to learn sometime.”
“You’d better teach her how to throw it,” Dean said. “Because I’m still not letting anything get close enough to be inside her range. I promised I’d protect her and I meant it.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Claudia was looking at him all sparkle-eyed again. Apparently last night’s embarrassing revelations had done nothing to dim her crush.
Chelo smirked and headed off into a small storeroom.
“We’d better divvy up the firepower while we’re at it,” Sam said. “Dean, you take the shotgun.”
“Right,” Dean hefted the Mossberg, checking it over. “What about you? You want the Magnum?”
“Don’t need it,” Sam said with a smirk. “I got nothing to prove in that department.”
“Yeah,” Xochi said. “But you also have the largest hands. Me, I prefer the .45.”
“Fair enough,” Sam said, picking up the hand cannon. “That leaves Claudia with the snubbie.”
Claudia reached for the .38 and Xochi grabbed her wrist.
“Not yet,” she said. “I’ll hold it for you until I have a chance to teach you how to use it. I don’t want you to shoot your foot. Or mine.”
When Chelo returned she had a huge, teetering stack of unmarked ammo boxes. Xochi stepped up to help her, taking about half the boxes and laying them out on the workbench.
“Dean?” She tossed him a box.
He opened the lid and saw what looked like a dozen ordinary shotgun rounds. But when he pulled one out and turned it over, instead of the usual star-shaped top, he saw a solid, gleaming silver slug with a flattened top and a deep dimpled center.
“Hollow point?” he said. “Hot damn.”
“Like you Americans always say,” Chelo said. “Ideal for home defense.”
Dean loaded up while Sam and Xochi expelled the standard rounds from their respective firearms and reloaded with silver.
“Here you go, muñeca,” Chelo said to Claudia, handing her a slim silver stiletto with an image of the Virgin Mary on the handle. She leaned in to stage whisper, “I gave you the best one.”
She handed out three other, plainer knives, one to each of them, and then dug up a sturdy leather backpack to carry all the ammo.
“Thanks, Chelo,” Xochi said, filling up the pack. “You’re the best.”
“Don’t you forget it,” Chelo said. “It was a pleasure doing business with you, as always. And you American boys, remember, I ship international. You can order online, anytime.”
She handed Sam a business card with a web address and a lot of gothy-looking clip art. He smiled and slipped it into his wallet.
Xochi shouldered the pack and laid a thick roll of Mexican money on Chelo. Chelo tried to refuse in Spanish, but Xochi insisted. Chelo gave Claudia a big hug and then kissed both Sam and Dean full on the mouth.
“Come back any time,” she said.
Xochi sold the two dirt bikes and the trailer to another friend before they left Chihuahua, arguing that they had a lot of miles to cover and they could drive faster without the trailer. Dean had been thinking the same thing.
“So where should we stop to try and summon the Alpha Borderwalker?” Sam asked as he pulled the Rover onto Carretera Federal 45.
“Anywhere along the way, I guess,” Dean replied. “Just make it somewhere pretty far from any kind of civilization.”
“Do you see anything around here that looks like civilization?” Sam asked, gesturing through the dusty windshield at the long flat stretch of nothing they were passing through.
“That’s for the best,” De
an said. “If she’s gonna be anywhere near as pissed off as the coyote guy said she’d be, I don’t want any innocent bystanders hanging around. In fact, that might be a good time for you guys to teach Claudia how to shoot.”
“We’re not letting you face the Alpha alone,” Xochi said.
“Trust me on this,” Dean said. “I can handle it.”
“No way,” Claudia said. “That’s crazy.”
“No,” Xochi said. “No, I’ll come with you. You need someone to have your back.”
“Look,” Dean said. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate the offer, but I’m the most expendable person in this group and you know it. You’re our native guide, Claudia’s our tracker and Sam, well whatever mystical reason you have for thinking you need him to succeed in this hunt, I’m not gonna argue with you on that. That leaves me.”
“He’s right,” Sam said.
“How can you say that?” Claudia asked.
“Tell ’em, Sammy,” he said. “I’m just trying to be practical here.”
Xochi swore quietly in Spanish.
“I hate it, but I cannot argue,” she said.
“But you were the one who said we all need to stay together from now on,” Claudia said to her. “You’re just gonna let him walk off and get killed?”
“This ain’t my first rodeo, kid,” Dean said. “I’m not gonna get killed, I’m gonna get that damn chunk of copal. And when I come back, I want to see you shoot the ace out of the ace of spades. Deal?”
“Fine,” Claudia said, turning her face away and staring out the window at the non-scenery. “I don’t care anyway.”
“Atta girl,” Dean said. “Sam, why don’t you take that little side road there. Just get us a few miles off the main drag.”
They passed a few little shack-like dwellings and a sort of roadside restaurant, then more nothing. The sun was starting to slide down into a smoldering-red sunset.
“Here,” Xochi said, pointing to a stubbly rock formation on the right.
Sam pulled the Rover off the road and killed the engine. The four of them got out and Claudia threw her arms around Dean’s neck, smashing her face into his chest. He patted her back and then pulled away.
“Hey, what did I tell you?” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Be careful,” she said. “Promise me you will. We need you.”
“Claudia,” Xochi said. “Get the ammo bag and a couple of those plastic bottles out of the back.”
“Go on,” Dean said.
Claudia looked up at him, then stood up on her tiptoes to press a lightning-quick kiss to his cheek.
“Good luck,” she said, blushing like a house on fire and turning back to the Rover.
Xochi came over to Dean and held out her flask. He took it. Took a slug. Tried to give it back, but she shook her head.
“Take it,” she said. “And this.”
She pulled out her sacred, snake-handled stone knife. Spun it in her grip so that the handle was facing him and held it out.
“It’s not obsidian,” she said. “But it’s better than nothing.”
He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded and took it.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Just bring it back,” she said.
She didn’t hug him or kiss him. She just turned without another word and walked back to the Rover. He wrapped his fingers around the sinuously carved handle. It was still warm from her hand. He silently promised her that he would bring it back.
He walked away, into the desert.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Dean walked toward the sunset until he couldn’t see the Rover anymore. The sound of Claudia’s target practice gradually faded into the distance. He couldn’t see any man-made structures anywhere. He couldn’t see the road or the car. He was utterly, completely alone. He eventually slowed and then stopped.
Reaching into his pocket, he took out the flute Huehuecoyotl had given him. He held it up, turning it over and over in his hand. It hadn’t occurred to him until that second that he had absolutely no idea how to play a flute. He’d never even touched one, not even a toy when he was a kid. The only toy instrument he’d ever had was a drum, and his frequently hung-over father had told him that it had “got lost” only two or three days after Christmas.
The flute had four holes in it, evenly spaced along the top. It was pretty obvious that you were supposed to put your mouth on the skinny end and blow into it, but he had no idea what the holes were for.
He lifted the flute to his lips and blew experimentally into it. The breathy, resonant note that came out was so achingly beautiful that it startled him into momentary silence. It was an inexplicably sexy sound, like a woman’s knowing, intimate laughter. The kind of laugh that let you know you were in. That you’d gone from flirting to making love for the first time. That she was yours.
Dean shook his head to clear it and raised the flute to his lips again, ready this time for the seductive effect of the music. He moved his fingertips over the top of the flute and realized that he could make the tone move up or down by covering or uncovering the holes. He was nowhere near an actual song or anything, but he was able to sustain several varying notes that echoed out over the ancient landscape like a beacon.
The air around him began to shimmer and blur. An undulating ribbon of soft white light appeared, bisecting the sunset and forming a deepening rift in the skin of the sky. The Alpha Borderwalker appeared out of the rift, the strange shimmer clinging to her long black hair as she stepped down onto the sand as casually as if she were getting off a train.
Huehuecoyotl had said that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he obviously wasn’t lying. She was absolutely breathtaking. Dean had always been partial to women with dark hair and eyes and she was a stunning example of his ideal type. Wide-set, mesmerizing espresso eyes behind heavy black lashes. Impossibly lush mouth.
Regal cheekbones. Flawless without a hint of make-up. But something about her beauty was disturbing. It was too perfect, so unreal that it was almost terrifying. Monstrous. Inhuman.
She was nude, but the soft, brown human skin below her collarbones graduated into sleek, mottled scales like a rattlesnake, making her luscious curves seem almost clothed. Her fingers ended in hooked black claws. An enormous pair of black-and-white condor’s wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, flexing and stretching wide, stirring the sand around Dean’s boots. This was a magnificent, terrible creature. Nothing like the miserable, tortured abomination they’d battled back in the States. This was what a Borderwalker was supposed to be.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voluptuous lips unmoving, as if her words were being whispered directly into Dean’s mind. “You are not my lover.”
The flute in his hand turned to smoke, drifting away on the desert wind. He stood his ground, unflinching.
“Huehuecoyotl sent me,” Dean said. “He told me that you would help me.”
Her heavy eyebrows bunched together into a slight frown. She took a step closer, the rich, amber-like scent of copal dizzying at close range, and reached out a talon-tipped finger to touch his throat, just below the line of his jaw. He could feel Xochi’s stone knife pressed against the small of his back, tucked into the waistband of his jeans, but there was no way to get to it in time to stop her from slitting his throat ear to ear if that’s what she wanted.
“I do not help human men,” she said.
“This help,” he said. “It’s not for me. It’s for a woman. Her name is Elvia Reveultas.”
“Elvia,” she said, the name barely louder than a breath inside Dean’s head.
“You know her?” Dean asked.
“I know what has been done to her,” the Alpha said. “I could do worse to you, human. With pleasure.”
She caressed his throat with the flat of her palm, the sharp point of her thumbnail sliding up into the soft spot behind his ear. He needed to think fast. To say something. Anything.
“Wow,” he said. “This really isn’t the ki
nd of welcome I was expecting.”
“You know nothing about me,” she said, unmoving lips inches from his. “Or my welcome.”
“I just meant...” He swallowed against the crush of her hand on his trachea. “After everything that Huehuecoyotl said about you...”
She released some of the pressure on his neck.
“What did he say about me?” she asked.
“Nothing important,” Dean said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Or I will gut you and leave you for the vultures.”
This was way too easy.
“Well it wasn’t so much what he said.” Dean shrugged. “You know how guys are. We hate coming right out and saying how we feel, but...” He paused. Let her hang for a second. “The way he talks about you, he’s obviously still crazy about you.”
“You lie,” she said. “You lie like he does.”
Of course he was lying, but, like he’d told Claudia, this wasn’t his first rodeo. Dean was a professional. A black belt, grandmaster, superfly liar. He’d been lying all his life and he knew that the easiest lie to sell is the one that someone really wants to believe.
“Yeah, what do I know?” Dean said. “I must be wrong.”
He turned like he was going to walk away. She let him, hands held palm up and open. He took a step, then another. Then, that sibilant whisper inside his head.
“Tell me what he said.”
“He told me about the time he spent with you,” Dean said, turning back to her. “I think that was the only time when he was ever really happy. He said you made him feel human.”
She was listening intently, claws clicking as she nervously opened and closed her hands.
“He still carries this awful guilt over what happened to you,” Dean continued. “He only left you because he wanted to protect you and ended up hurting you anyway.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Protect me from what?”
“Protect you from his own inner darkness,” Dean told her. “He knew he could never be the kind of man you deserve. That loving him would only bring you pain.”
Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss Page 19